Information workers’ reliance on email is turning them into ‘Inbox
Workers’ who spend the majority of their time on email and shun social
media at work, according to new research launched today by Mimecast®,
the leading supplier of cloud-based email
archiving, continuity
and security
for Microsoft Exchange, Hosted Exchange and Office 365.

The research – the second in Mimecast’s Shape of Email series –
surveyed 2,500 information workers in the U.S., U.K. and South Africa to
explore the average employee’s attitudes to, and frustrations with,
email. The report found that on average an information worker will use
email for four hours per day; equivalent to more than 37 full 24-hour
days over a working year, 111 working days, or 888 working hours.

However, users are also frustrated by the limitations of email. Just one
in four users report high levels of satisfaction with their email
functionality and one in three expect email and social media to converge
in the next five years. It is clear that email needs to evolve if it is
to cope with the demands of modern day Inbox Workers, who see email not
just as a communications tool but as a file store, search engine and
collaboration platform.

So, what is an Inbox Worker? And how can you tell if you are one?
Here are a few tips:

You use your inbox as a default file server and search tool –
No longer just a tool for sending and receiving messages, an Inbox
Worker’s email account is their default way of storing, filing and
searching for documents or information:

Eighty-six percent of email users surveyed rely on email as a
search tool to find documents or information from within their
inbox or archive

However, with email systems rarely designed for rapid searching,
these searches take two minutes on average, suggesting that a lack
of intelligent search capability is contributing to the huge
amount of time spent using email every day

Despite this, one in two (49 percent) believe that email is
reducing the need for other file storage systems

Your use of work email has been unaffected by social media –
Inbox Workers use social media, but it is primarily for personal use.
The rise of social media has had little impact on their reliance upon
work email:

Shape of Email found that email is preferred over social
media for all forms of workplace collaboration, including
documentation exchange (preferred by 91 percent of respondents),
arranging a meeting (89 percent), requesting information (88
percent) and sharing views and opinions (72 percent)

Seventy-eight percent of email users say that social media has not
reduced their reliance on email for dealing with customers and 76
percent say that it has not reduced the need for email when
communicating with colleagues

Seventy-four percent of information workers believe that
information shared in an email is taken more seriously than
information shared through social media

Your love of email can lead to bad habits – With Inbox Workers
relying on email for so much of their working day, their dependence
can give rise to bad corporate behavior:

While 39 percent of information workers regularly send and receive
workplace email outside of working hours, 25 percent of email
users admit that they have sent emails late in the evening purely
to “show commitment”

Seventy-five percent say that they have sent emails they have
later regretted, with 40 percent having deleted emails they
shouldn’t have

Even more worrying, 10 percent of those surveyed admitted to
having read emails in other people’s inboxes

You like to be kept in the loop – Inbox Workers like to be
copied on emails, even if they are non-essential messages:

Nearly half (45 percent) of email users believe that it is useful
to be copied on emails internally with 35 percent saying that they
find “CC” email a really useful way of staying on top of external
communications. Just one in five (21 percent) believe that “CC”
email is overused within their company

This might explain why 40 percent of all emails received are
considered to be functional, or of low value and just 14 percent
of all emails received are considered business critical

On average, email users receive 32 emails a day, containing 4.5
megabytes of data in total

Also, IT teams overestimate the impact of social media on email
usage:

One in three IT decision makers thought that the use of social
collaboration tools had reduced employees’ reliance on corporate
email when surveyed for Mimecast’s first Shape of Email report.
However, this is not borne out by the experience of employees

While 32 percent of IT teams thought that social tools had reduced
the need for email when communicating with colleagues, only 24
percent of information workers agreed

And while 30 percent of IT managers thought that social media has
impacted the need for email when dealing with customers, just 22
percent of users felt the same

“The research shows that the way the average employee uses email at work
has changed,” commented Peter Bauer, CEO and co-founder, Mimecast. “For
many people, email is no longer just a messaging system. It has become
the primary tool for storing, sharing and searching for information.
This is why we are seeing information workers increasingly becoming
Inbox Workers; they rely on email for all aspects of their job and
spend, on average, 50 percent of their working day using email.”

CIO, CTO & Developer Resources

“What is clear is that, despite the huge number of specialist
collaboration and social tools that have come to market in recent years,
email remains the first choice for the majority of business users,”
Bauer continued. “While email is not perfect, it seems that information
workers are reluctant to adopt other, more social, tools if it means
they have to leave their inbox behind. Therefore, rather than trying to
entice users away from email and on to other platforms, IT teams should
look for ways to make their email more efficient by introducing new,
inbox-friendly collaboration tools and making the data stored within the
archive more accessible.”

The research surveyed over 2,500 information workers from the UK, USA
and South Africa. The research was conducted by Loudhouse on behalf of
Mimecast in Summer 2012.

About Mimecast

Mimecast (www.mimecast.com)
delivers cloud-based email
management for Microsoft Exchange, including archiving, continuity
and security. By unifying disparate and fragmented email environments
into one holistic solution that is always available from the cloud,
Mimecast minimizes risk and reduces cost and complexity, while providing
total end-to-end control of email. Founded in the United Kingdom in
2003, Mimecast serves more than 6,000 customers and 1.5m users worldwide
and has offices in Europe, North America, Africa and the Channel Islands.

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